Solutions: The Security Platform of Tomorrow is Here

Video Management Systems (VMS) arrived 15 years ago and have been one
of the top technologies to transform the IP video surveillance market.
Modern VMS has evolved substantially from its start as a simple
surveillance system offering video data recording and playback, to
going far beyond simplistic control of cameras and videos, emerging
more as a security platform, which caters for a range of additional
security features.

“It is no longer sufficient to refer to it as a video management system
because it is now a fully-fledged software security-platform,” says Max
de Lorm, director, IPVS,
a distribution business specialising in IP video surveillance software,
hardware and systems. “Offering significantly more than a traditional
VMS, modern security platforms have evolved into systems that provide a
huge range of features, add-ons, and integration options. The end
result is that they offer a tool that is able to manage much more than
just the video surveillance environment

He says that in today’s surveillance sector there are some very
significant technology enhancements bringing improved functionality to
the security platform and impacting the paralleled rise in its
development and implementation:

Mobile device integration – this has moved beyond delivering
video to a mobile device, users are now able to push system alarms to a
mobile device, making the device a security management tool. In
addition, mobile devices can also record video and send it back to the
recording server for managing incidents (i.e. the mobile behaves as
though it were a camera on the surveillance network).

Edge recording: the camera uses a storage device, such as an
SD card and records locally. The video is then streamed back to the
central data store or remains on the camera. This offers a potential
storage saving and also offers redundancy as the camera can continue to
record even if the central store is down.

Cloud storage: locally cloud archiving is still in its
infancy, but vendors are starting to offer online cloud storage for
transmitting archives either as a backup, or to replace local storage
entirely.

De Lorm concludes
that demand is specifically growing for customised security platforms:
“Sectors such as retail, financial services, manufacturing, logistics
and facilities management are all perfect candidates for this
technology and we anticipate continued interest from these vertical
sectors.”